"Let a Thousand Flowers
Bloom" - Fortune

"Let a Thousand Flowers
Bloom"

I have to say I cringed a little when I read it, because it
helps reinforce the idea that there's a sort of Perl Hierarchy, or
that there are Perl Gods, or that "you must be this tall to
ride".

Randal and I are just normal ol' Perl hackers. We just spend a
lot of time on Perl, and writing about it, and talking about it.
The only reason we are Perl luminaries is that we are Perl
luminaries. I'm not necessarily a better programmer, or have better
ideas, or I'm a better debugger than anyone else. I just do it and
make noise about it.

Even though Joey's response was out of line, I admire his spirit
of "I'm just going to go do it." TMTOWTDI is one of the cardinal
rules of Perl. Similarly, over on the module-authors list, the
perennial argument of "Maybe CPAN should have minimum requirements
for posting modules" has raised its ugly head. Instead, I said what
I always say during these arguments: "CPAN thrives BECAUSE of the
unfettered uploading of shit, not in spite of it."

So to it will be with Joey's website. Maybe it will be a dismal
failure. Maybe it will become the Next Great Perl resource.
However, I know that there is zero chance of Next Great Perl
resource if he doesn't try. The only way you get home runs is by
stepping up to the plate, and if you strike out, you're doing
pretty good. Batting 3/10 is a great batting average, but in real
life we find those odds terrifying.

Personally, as much as I like the community around Perlmonks, I
think it's a terrible site for new people, and is practically
unsearchable. I'd love to see something leapfrog Perlmonks and
become the Next Great Thing. That's why I stopped writing to
use.perl.org, because I think it's a terrible news source. Instead,
I started perlbuzz.com, and went with that. Yes, it's different,
but that's OK.